The Last Roman (The Praetorian Series - Book I) Read online

  ***

  It took fifteen minutes for the last of the team to cycle through the airlock, and another twenty before we had our gear in lockers, had our wetsuits hung up, and had changed into duty gear the crew had provided for us.

  Gathered in the small briefing room, the team chatted while we waited for our briefing to begin. Joining the team was the sub’s skipper, Captain Billings, whose physicality could have in no way better fit the role of a sub commander. He was short in stature and thin like a runner, a perfect build for the cramped confines of a submarine. His square jaw and perpetual five o’clock shadow gave him a roguish look that the ladies probably loved. I couldn’t help but notice Helena’s interest, which was probably more annoying than it should have been.

  Don’t be jealous, Jacob, she’ll probably never see him again.

  Jealous? What the hell was wrong with me?

  I tried to distract myself by probing my damaged eye, which was still black and hurt like hell. I’m sure at least Santino would find something funny out of all this.

  The thought of my troublesome friend brought my eyes across the aisle, where I found him already looking at me, flicking his eyes in Billings’ direction, then over at Helena, giving me another one of his annoying smiles.

  There were times when I wondered why we were friends at all.

  Still, despite his antics, I appreciated his attention. It reminded me that I had a friend, someone I could rely on… even if he was an arrogant jackass. So, I did what any good friend would do: took a rubber band from my briefing packet and loaded it around my fingers. Taking careful aim, I fired, nailing him right between the eyes. One of his hands reactively flung to his forehead to ease the sting, and he gave me the same glare he’d offered earlier when I’d kicked his chair out from beneath him.

  I couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Something funny, Hunter?”

  I glanced over at Helena, feigning innocence. “Hmm? Oh, nothing. Just Santino being Santino.”

  She leaned forward to see him rubbing his struck forehead, mumbling.

  “You two have a history don’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I sighed. “We certainly do.”

  “Oooh, I feel a story coming,” she replied excitedly, clutching her hands together between her thighs and shrugging her head between her shoulders, giving me an uncharacteristically childish smile that made her look annoyingly cute.

  I sighed again, realizing I owed her a story, but was doubly annoyed because I knew I couldn’t just end this one with Santino. It was about more than just him.

  “The abridged version then…” I began before taking a long breath. “Over a year ago, his Delta squad was cut off from extraction while on an op in North Korea. We were assigned as their standby unit and were sent in to pull their asses out if they got in trouble. They did, and my team was ambushed in the process of rescuing them and we were cut off from Santino and his men. Through a stroke of pure luck, our two positions ran into one other. The momentary confusion on the enemy’s part gave us the time we needed to get the hell out of there. But on our way out, I was shot in the leg. Twice. In the same damn leg. The wounds were pretty bad and I was losing a lot of blood. Possible arterial bleeding. I never knew and never asked afterward, but I’d known that I was done for when a bad guy blundered onto me as I lay there dying.”

  I had to pause and close my eyes as the flashback forced me to recall one of the most horrible memories I had. My hand instinctually moved to my thigh to massage the area where I’d been hit. The scars on that leg remained, and were not pretty.

  “He pointed his gun at my face and started to taunt me, laughing all the while. I’d lost my rifle after hitting the ground, and my pistol was inaccessible. A few seconds later, he shot me in the arm.” My hand now moved to massage the area just above the elbow on my left arm. “Just for the hell of it, I guess. It was at that point I knew I was going to die. Even thought I saw some angels. But, the next thing I know, Santino was there, ramming his knife through the back of the man’s throat, severing his spinal column. Guy died instantly. That’s where he does his best work, you know, up close. Santino’s as quiet as a ghost and even scarier than one with a knife.”

  Helena nodded, waiting for me to continue.

  “Anyway, we didn’t really know each other yet. We’d only met once during a cross training operation a few months back. We were barely acquaintances. Even so, he came back for me. He slapped on a few field bandages, picked me up, and pulled my fat out of the fire. He even found my rifle for me.”

  “For such a free spirited asshole, he seems like a good man to have your back.”

  “He’s the best,” I said wholeheartedly. “I spent three months in the hospital where we ended up. Santino was assigned to a training detail on the base at the same time and he came to visit every day. I always wondered if he used some of that Delta pull to swing the training detail, but he’d never tell me if he did. We just sat there every chance we got playing cards and video games, cracking jokes at lame daytime soap operas and shooting the shit. We became instant friends. I’ll never make a better one if I live a dozen lifetimes.”

  I smiled, remembering the days as Santino became one of my best friends, before sighing a third time, my mind wandering to the rest of the time I spent in the hospital. The time I’d spent in the company of someone else as well.

  A few minutes ago, I’d thought about telling Helena the rest, but now, I wasn’t so sure. The second half of the story began the day I awoke from my surgery, and was assigned a nurse to take care of me. It was a story I hadn’t told anyone before, and even Santino didn’t know the full extent of it. That nurse had changed the way I looked at my life.

  After a few sessions of rehab where we had to work very closely together, it was obvious the nurse was interested, and so was I. After a few weeks, our time together transcended the typical patient/caregiver relationship and bloomed into something more. During my recuperation, we would go on long walks and spend hours in the gym together rehabbing my injury. I remembered how every day, when she came to my room, Santino would just sit there as she completely ignored him while tending to my every need.

  I sighed to myself while Helena waited patiently for me to continue.

  I’d never grown closer to a woman than I did during those few months. Relationships had never been my strong suit, but somehow she and I had just clicked. I fell hard for her. I was completely unfazed by the fact that I knew we’d probably never see each other again after I returned to active duty. The war had just barely begun and the average life expectancy of service men and women deployed in the field shortened every day.

  After I was finally discharged, I knew it was over.

  When she and Santino carted me out in a wheelchair, the nurse helped me out while Santino went to pack the taxi. Neither one of us had known what to say. We just stood there looking at each other, but after a few seconds, still not knowing what to say, she threw herself into my arms and gave me a kiss that held us there for minutes. When she pulled away, she told me she hoped to see me again, but I knew even she didn’t believe her own words. I said goodbye as strongly as I could, which only managed to be little more than a whisper. She put on a brave face, but as I watched her retreat back to the hospital, I noticed a trail of tears tracing her steps like fat rain drops on the pavement.

  It had all been like a fairy tale.

  Thinking about those happy, but inevitably painful few months did little to lighten my mood now. Those days could have been better. It’s why I hated the story about Santino and me meeting. It was like one of those dreams where everything was so perfect, and you felt so happy, only to wake up and realize that it was all just a dream and your life was everything but.

  I had to live that dream.

  As I played the story over in my head, I found myself staring at the back of the chair in front of me, but my mind was interrupted by Helena waving a h
and in front of my face.

  “Hello… Jacob…” she said. “Anybody home?”

  I jerked my head in response and turned to look at her.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I believe you were about to finish your story. You and Santino were in a hospital?”

  I turned away and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

  No. I couldn’t tell her quite yet.

  “Sorry, Helena,” I said, looking back at her, “but the rest of that story can wait for another time.”

  Her eyebrows narrowed in confusion, probably wondering what could be so personal that I couldn’t tell her after she’d so readily offered her own story. She opened her mouth to inquire further, but she never got a chance to finish her question before Billings began his briefing.

  “All right, mates,” his voice, from an American’s perspective, was a typical British drawl, “I’ll try and keep this short. I know you’ve already been briefed on your specific mission parameters, so I’ll key you in on the operational position of my sub.”

  Billings pulled up a map of the Mediterranean Sea on a monitor, and zoomed in on the Eastern coast where we would be making our insertion. The map looked similar to the one McDougal had presented earlier.

  “We’ll be dropping you off here,” he said, indicating a point on the map with a laser pointer, “a few miles off the shore line. Once you disembark, you’ll be on your own. Our presence here is completely off the grid. We’re not even supposed to be in the Mediterranean.”

  He manipulated the map to show the satellite imagery of the port we were going to hit. The image showed a shabby town, looking typical for the impoverished area. The port had numerous ships docked, cargo ships mostly, but no military gear.

  “This image was downloaded ten minutes ago from an Argos II Surveillance Satellite that will remain in geosynchronous orbit throughout the duration of the mission. The port has little to no military presence that we can see, and both intelligence and satellite imagery confirm there won’t be any guards in the area. Your target ship just docked, but unloading isn’t scheduled until later tonight. Your contact in town is part of the crew, so our information should be accurate.”

  He shifted the image again, zooming out and eastward toward the town.

  “As you can see, the town is quite the opposite of the port and is crawling with armed guards, patrols, and picket points. Intel suggests this activity is normal for the area, so expect plenty of resistance should it come to a firefight. When it’s time to leave, you will need to get back to the port so we can pick you up. We’ll have a team waiting to bring you back to the Triumph. Chopper extraction is out of the question as resources in the area are negligible and the risk of RPG attacks is too high.”

  That last part caused me to wince. Even if things go completely by the book, and we accomplish our mission goals without alerting anyone, extraction will still be the most difficult part. Commandeering a vehicle will be difficult without alerting any guards, especially if that image was right, and the bad guys had check points set up. Picking up Helena would only complicate matters, but if we had to come out guns blazing, having her covering our asses would be invaluable.

  “If there are no other questions, we’re done here. We’ll be arriving at our drop off point in thirty five hours. Until then, my ship is yours. Questions?”

  The Praetorians were silent

  “Well then. Good luck, chaps.”